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Actual dialogue from meeting my downstairs neighbor for the first time:

HER: … because I grew up in the Southwest.

ME: Where in the Southwest did you grow up?

HER: Well, New Mexico.

ME: Where in New Mexico?

HER: I tell people Albuquerque because that’s a place they’ve heard of, but it’s actually not very close to Albuquerque.

ME: Oh, where’s that? I might have heard of it.

HER: I was born in Gallup.

ME: Oh.

HER: It’s actually—

ME: I was raised in Gallup.

HER: What?!

Looking back, I didn’t ask her enough questions about it, and seeing as I’ve lived here for almost nine months and had only seen her once through the window, I probably won’t get the chance. But hey, pretty wild, right?

From what I understand, I have a reputation for being intelligent. Some even consider me to be intellectual. I can’t think of anything about me that’s further from the truth.

I was a B student in high school, which is reasonably smart, but once I made it to college, I became a C student who barely graduated. I hardly did any of the reading and basically bullshat my way through all of my papers and exams.

I don’t read much, and when I do, it tends to be trashy urban fantasy. I don’t watch informative documentaries or complex movies on Netflix, but rather action and comic book movies—I’ve already shared my love of the Resident Evil franchise, and that’s a series where every movie is exponentially dumber than the last one. I don’t like intellectually challenging music like Tom Waits or Amanda Palmer, but rather the Wu-Tang Clan or catchy grunge. And while I am enamored with Sandman, most of my comic book collection leans toward the wham bam pow! (Also, I kind of hate Maus.) So, yeah, as far as pop culture is concerned, I lean heavily on the pop.

I’m always worried people get the wrong idea about my pursuits. When I did that kind of thing, I hated it when people called me an artist. An artist creates visual works that enrich the minds of people who gaze upon them. I just doodled pictures of cats and squirrels and characters in my short stories. And I’m a writer, but I’m not exploring the human condition through a mastery of the English language. My current novel is about a teenage girl in high school trying to outwit an invisible murder spirit.

I’m not writing this to fish for compliments or to feel sorry for myself. I’m just being honest. I’m not an extraordinary person, and I don’t need to be. I don’t have a responsibility to be more than I am. “What about bettering yourself?” you might ask. I answer, “What’s wrong with our society that we’re not allowed to accept ourselves for where we’re at?” Because I worked hard for years to get to the point where I’m this level of unexceptional, and I would like to enjoy it, thank you very much.

I’m only an okay writer. I’m a marginally decent cartoonist. I’m a poor example of an intellectual. And I’m not missing anything. I’m Jeremiah Murphy, and I like who I am.

I said to my psychiatrist during our appointment, “Nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of our country, so I’m not worried that I’m feeling depressed and anxious and a little hopeless right now because any rational, sane person would be feeling that way.”

He agreed with me 100 percent. And since he is, hands down, the best mental health professional I have ever met, maybe we should think about that and cut ourselves a little slack for being freaked out for being locked up during a deadly freaking pandemic.

What many of you may not know about Henry the Cat, my roommate’s companion who shredded my arm yesterday, took full control of the couch last week, and rearranges the art on my wall when he thinks it’s time for breakfast, and basically rules this apartment with an iron paw, is that he used to be my cat.

One morning in the spring of 2014, I was living in Doha, Qatar, and, while making coffee, I heard someone crying. I ran to my front door, and there was a little black kitten, scared to death. I took him inside, gave him some food and a safe place to sleep, and he was a mellow kitty, and Kate and I decided we would quarantine him for a little bit and let him join the family. He was mellow because he was malnourished and underslept. Fed and rested, he turned out to be made of springs and destruction. Also, he was a really smart cat, and smart cats are the worst.

He was introduced to the house, and he got along pretty well with Newcastle, and Magik ignored him successfully, but Andrew was not okay with this. He started to lose weight and pee all over the house, and since Andrew had lived with Kate for fourteen years by that point, the new guy, who we had named Henry, had to go.

We took him to the vet to be fostered out, and they put him in a cage, and he screamed in the cage, nonstop, until they had to give him back to us. We tried fostering him at other houses in the neighborhood, but he was too much to handle. One place they locked him in the bathroom, and he just let himself out. We couldn’t take him back, but every other day someone would return him to us. He couldn’t live with us, not if Andrew was going to be okay. We had three options. We could let him back out on the streets of Doha, where life would be nasty, brutish, and short. We could put him to sleep, which hardly seemed fair. Or we could pay over two thousand dollars to ship him to the United States to live with some friends who fostered animals. It wasn’t even a choice.

When he arrived at our friends’ home, he proceeded to be the cataclysm he was for everybody else, but they were made of stronger stuff than the others in Doha. They really couldn’t wait to get rid of him, though. Enter Nicole, the cat whisper, who instantly bonded with him on a visit. She got a new apartment, specifically for him, and brought him home.

There has never been a better animal/human match in history. They are obsessed with each other. When Nicole has to spend the night elsewhere because she’s dogsitting, she FaceTimes with him. And when she was seeing a guy and brought him home overnight, he went into a fit of jealous rage. (Said the guy, “I think he likes me!” Said Henry, “I’m going to stab you in the face.”) We braced for the worst when Newcastle and I moved in, but the two little guys really love each other (they get jealous of Nicole’s affections, though), and Henry tolerates me.

And once again, he’s my problem. I say, “Remember me, Henry? I rescued you from the streets!” He replies, “Give me treats, or I’m going to smash your favorite coffee mug.” So I give him treats.

We’re running out of toilet paper, and every grocery store doesn’t have any, so my roommate turned to online sources. She found one deal that is awfully tempting, even though we live in an 800-square-foot apartment and have no space anywhere to put eighty rolls of toilet paper.

Welcome to the apocalypse. Bet you didn’t anticipate these kinds of moral dilemmas.

Day 15 of quarantine, and I’ve snapped. I thought that, as a rabid introvert, this would be great, but I’m barely keeping it together.

Part of it is physical. It’s a seven-minute walk at top speed to get to the office from the Metro in the morning, and Order Processing is an active, demanding job, and over the course of two days, all of that is gone. Walks around the cemetery aren’t filling in the gap.

Mostly it’s time. What am I supposed to do with all of it? I thought I’d write more with tons of it, but I’m actually writing less. When I worked, I wrote for an hour first thing in the mornings, on the trains when I found a seat, and in the hour between jobs. I still write for an hour in the morning, but that’s it. The rest of my time I spend trying unsuccessfully to think of things to write and watching TV. When time isn’t precious, I tend to waste more of it.

This is going to go on for a while, so what I need is some way to apply the pressure that I’m used to, or just to use the time productively, or to accept and forgive myself if I’m not productive. These are strange times.